Manufacturing

The seamless integration of manufacturing and the supply chain is key to ensuring that plans are viable and that products are made according to plan. But that’s only half the proposition. You must also synchronize manufacturing to respond quickly to changes in demand, whether caused by a competitor’s promotion or an unexpected acceleration to a new product launch.

A new culture
There are so many great programs out there to help you create a World class Manufacturing Practice – from Lean to Six Sigma to TPM. You may have all three in place somewhere. So why are you still struggling? We start with a manufacturing maturity assessment to figure that out. It will assess your business priorities and goals and how well they align with your site strategies and goals. A well-thought out Leadership Change Management Program is critical.

The new culture must start at the top. The next step is to empower multi-functional shop floor teams with the skills to become a high performing work team. We often find the basics missing – whether it be effective daily direction setting meetings, visual management tools on the shop floor or problem-solving tools. This gives you the strength on the floor to drive out unplanned stops and improve your changeover times. Then we help you apply specific tools like value stream mapping to determine the right targeted actions and can help you take those targeted actions using changeover reduction, de-bottlenecking, make-to-stock make-to-order analysis, cellular flow, and pull replenishment system best practices. All of these tools and practices will power your OEE improvement journey.

Pain Point:Have your efforts to drive throughput improvements failed to move the OEE needle to the goal? Are you out of capacity, over cost or missing customer demand?

The power of the schedule
We have proven that throughput, inventory and customer response all improve when you prioritize your production schedule based on the demand profile. We start with a value stream mapping exercise to open up eyes to the concept of non-valued added efforts that burn time and build unneeded inventory. We add a SKU rationalization process so you can weed non-performing SKUs out of the schedule – with multi-functional agreement, of course. Then we turn to the Product Wheel Approach to production planning. A member of our team wrote the book on it.

Product wheels establish a standard production cycle with a fixed period and an optimized product sequence and optimum frequency for each product.
Then we bring tools and processes that make using the wheel easier in the time-pressured real world of the floor. Now you can focus your attention on the changeovers that really count, and data is organized to support key decisions. The orchestration of skilled people following improved processes allows you to maximize your technology investment. Best of all, you reduce the feeling of chaos, replacing it with a sense of ownership and control.

Everyone seeing the same goal the same way
One of our clients summed it up best when he said “75% of supply chain opportunity is outside the walls of the plant”. We have helped many clients turn this from a challenge into an opportunity. Building communities of practice across sites gives manufacturing more influence on what is done company-wide and how and when manufacturing is involved. Our business integration approach allows the sites to involve themselves in the corporate projects at the right level and right time, ensuring correct levels of training and proper understanding of resource impact on the floor.

Pain Point:Are the hand-offs from upstream scientists to product development to manufacturing costing you speed-to-market?

One product, many plants
Zinata believes that the common recipe must define the product specification, the manufacturing steps to make it and the raw materials used. The recipe eliminates complexity by providing one language, one way of thinking, a golden thread from concept to launch. We call it Enterprise Recipe Management.

We ensure that the exact recipe which originated in R&D is manufactured to the same specifications in every plant, regardless of location. We help you lay down permanent connections from upstream to downstream, and vice versa. This increases speed to market and reduces the cycle time of optimization.

Pain Point:I need to build a new plant, but I don’t want to replicate the problems I am facing in my current plants – is that possible?

The grass is greener
Need to build a new plant in record time without replicating today’s problems? We frequently rise to this challenge and have a documented it in our Greenfield Path to Success. This is a golden opportunity to make a step change in business performance, creating a model of your plant of the future. Our approach is to be clear what needs to be built – and design the operations and plant together. We have learned from past failures – poorly defined business requirements, treating the project like a technology project rather than a business project, believing “it will all come together in the end”. So we start with business requirements, then design and build the operating system and enabling automation and information systems. That operating system design defines and aligns the process, people, and technology. This 360 degree view is critical – we build the car around the driver.

We thrive on solving complex business performance and process problems. If you’ve got questions or would like to discuss how we’ve helped companies like yours, drop us a line.